Melissa and Joe Durham, a local Marietta couple, will be featured on the HGTV show ‘Property Brothers’ tonight at 9 p.m. During production of their episode of the popular program, the Durhams posed for a photo with the Property Brothers themselves: Drew Scott, left, and Jonathan Scott, second from right.Special to the MDJ

MARIETTA — A Marietta family will be featured on Home and Garden TV’s home renovation reality show, “Property Brothers,” tonight at 9 p.m.

Melissa Durham, a Marietta native and owner of Vineyard Imaging Printing in Marietta, said her family’s east Cobb home renovation will appear on the show, which, according to its website, takes “extreme fixer-upper” houses and transforms them into dream homes.

The brothers on “Property Brothers” are Jonathan Scott, a licensed contractor, and Drew Scott, who is a real estate agent, according to HGTV’s website. In 2004, the brothers started Scott Real Estate, a company overseeing the sales and construction of residential and commercial projects. The brothers use their experience to renovate homes on the show.

The process of getting selected for the reality show involved paperwork, online interviews and conversations with the producers, Durham said.

“My husband saw on Facebook that ‘Property Brothers’ was casting in the Atlanta area, so we applied,” Durham said. “We were selected in July (2013), bought our home in August and were finally able to move in by Thanksgiving.”

Durham said the show’s producers wanted to make sure the family had the right mix of willingness to get dirty, personality and lack of home aesthetic.

The fixer-upper home in east Cobb was renovated by the show from September through November.

Former Marietta City Councilman Johnny Sinclair, who is a Harry Norman Realtor for the Cobb area, said he appreciates shows like “Property Brothers.”

“I have found there’s not a lot of people looking for fixer-upper houses, so a program like ‘Property Brothers’ shows people fixing up the house is not as overwhelming as people fear it can be,” Sinclair said.

“Property Brothers” renovated the basement for the Durham family to provide for an “in-law suite,” Durham said, noting she and her family continued renovations on their own, as well.

Durham said part of the reason they wanted a fixer-upper home was because financial difficulties, coupled with a desire for extra space, left little room for meeting all the family’s needs. Durham’s mother-in-law, Diane Durham, was diagnosed with stage-four cancer in 2010, after her husband was laid off from his Cobb County teaching job.

“As a family, we worked very hard to keep our home and stay afloat in a terrible market,” Durham said. “We took his mother in our home and turned our office into her bedroom.”

The Durham family needed more room to accommodate Diane Durham, and their own children, who were ages 1 and 3 at the time.

“We knew we needed more home for less money,” she said, adding the show provided a renovated basement the family can use as an in-law suite.

“What you will not see on the show is the rest of the home,” she said, adding the family scraped every ceiling smooth, painted and changed each door knob and light fixture on their own.

“We are so proud to be in a great home that we put so much heart into,” Durham said.

Durham said she wants Marietta residents to tune in and see their hometown represented on a “popular” show. Durham and her sister have a small furniture booth at the Queen of Hearts Antiques and Interiors store on Sandy Plains Road in Marietta, which is shown in the episode, along with local attractions such as the fountain in Marietta Square and Lassiter High School, where Joe Durham now coaches ninth-grade football as a defensive coordinator.

“Viewers may also glimpse The Strand and other familiar places that only local residents will appreciate,” Durham said, explaining the show airs in the U.S. and in Canada.

“We are proud of our city and the many people who helped make this all happen,” Durham said. “It was an honor to be chosen and we will see the episode for the first time with everyone else.”

I can not wait to see. I love the two homes they have done in town that have shown earlier in the year.

I bought a Sandy springs estate sale house that sate on the market for over 1.5 years. Either people wanted to tear it down and the estate (daughter did not want to see her family home go down, she wanted to see future daughters to get married in the backyard. ) I paid $99 sf. Put about $50 sf into it. It is now worth At least $200 sf. . I have run out of money, but will refinance in a couple of years and put another $20sf in to gain another $50 sf.

You get a close in location and a better constructed house by renovating a 1960's or older fixer upper.

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